Another Jack Ketchum Novel to Hit the Screen: 'Offspring'

When someone who's read hundreds of horror novels says something like "Jack Ketchum is one of the best authors out there," you might want to bring up a few titles on Amazon and maybe snag a tome or two. (That's if you're looking for horror fiction in the first place, obviously.) Over the last few years, we've (finally!) seen several of the author's works transformed into indie flicks, and I'd say those filmmakers are presently three-for-three! (Those films would be The Lost, The Girl Next Door, and Red.)

So it's with no small amount of nerdly excitement that I read the following over at Dread Central: Looks like the guys behind the harrowing Girl Next Door are about to tackle Offspring, a 1991 Ketchum "crazy cannibal" novel that is actually the follow-up to the truly disturbing Off Season. (And I mean "disturbing" as a compliment.) But why would producer Andrew van den Houten start with Part 2 instead of Part 1? I assume it has something to do with rights issues -- as in "someone else probably owns the rights to Part 1" -- but Shock's Ryan Rotten very astutely makes the same point that I was going to make: That if someone did Off Season straight from the book, it'd look a whole LOT like Wrong Turn or yet another rendition of The Hills Have Eyes. Kind of a shame, really, but you can always read the book.

For more on the brutally memorable work of Jack Ketchum, check out his official site right here.